Georgetown's Thompson Coach Of Year, Porter Player Of Year In Big East

March 12, 2013|By DOM AMORE, damore@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

John Thompson III, who guided Georgetown to the Big East regular season championship, was named the conference's coach of the year Tuesday. The announcement came just before the Big East's last tournament, as the league is presently constituted, began in New York.

Hoyas sophomore Otto Porter Jr. was named player of the year.

Georgetown was picked to finish fifth in the league in preseason, but went 14-4 to tie for the best record in the league and earn the No. 1 seed at the tournament. The Hoyas beat Syracuse twice, and beat UConn 79-78 in an epic double-overtime game at Gampel Pavilion on Feb. 27.

UConn's Kevin Ollie, in his first season, led the Huskies to a 20-10 record, 10-8 in the conference, much better than expected, but Thompson won the vote of league coaches. It's Thompson's first coach of the year award but his father, John Thompson Jr., won it three times during his long career at Georgetown.

Porter averaged 18.1 points and 7.3 rebounds for Georgetown and scored 22 points in the win over UConn, including the winning basket with 9.5 seconds left in the second OT. Porter was the only unanimous selection to the Big East's first team and was the obvious favorite for this award. UConn's Shabazz Napier also made first team.

Louisville's Peyton Siva was the Big East's scholar-athlete of the year.

More Ollie Nominations

Though Ollie, 40, missed out on the Big East award, he is in the running for two national coach of the year honors. He is a finalist for the Ben Jobe Award, given annually to the top minority coach in Division I college basketball. It is named for Jobe, the long-time coach at historically black colleges and universities such as Southern, Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Talladega, Tuskegee and South Carolina State.

Last week, Ollie was named a finalist for the Joe B. Hall Award, given to the top first-year coach in the nation. The other finalists are Baggett, Christian, Mason, Mike Martin (Brown), Dan Muller (Illinois State), Jack Perri (LIU-Brooklyn), Richard Pitino (FIU), Nick Robinson (Southern Utah), and Travis Williams (Tennessee State).

The winners of these awards will be announced during Final Four week in Atlanta.

Irish Make It Official

Notre Dame has reached an agreement with the Big East to leave the conference on July 1. Notre Dame is going to the ACC in all sports except football, but was to play in the Big East at least one more year. When the Catholic 7 accomplished their departure, Notre Dame was caught in between — to either stay in the new as yet unnamed conference with UConn and the other football-playing schools, or play in the new Big East. So it made sense for the Irish to leave now for the ACC.

"From the time of our decision to join the ACC we have stressed our commitment to ensuring that our departure was achieved in a collegial manner," Notre Dame vice president and director of athletics Jack Swarbrick said. "This agreement realizes that intention and we are very grateful to the members of the Big East and commissioner [Mike] Aresco for helping to facilitate this orderly and timely transition."

The move allows the new, yet-to-be-named conference to get on with a new roster of teams for next year.